Recently, I’ve been checking out codekeep.net which allows developers to keep code snippets on the web either in a private folder or to be shared with others across the following programming languages: ActionScript, ASP, ASP.NET, Codesmith, C++, C#, CSS, Delphi, HTML, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, SQL, VB6, VBA, VB.NET, VBScript, XML and XSL.

If those languages don’t cover you, then an “other” category is also available.

Codekeep.net makes a Visual Studio add-in available for both Visual Studio 2003 .NET and Visual Studio 2005 so you can save your snippets while working.

Once the add-in is installed, click on TOOLS->CodeKeep and then choose one of the options: settings, my snippets, browse snippets, search snippets and add to codekeep.

What do these options do?

Settings - change your password, optionally connect through a proxy server
My Snippets - display all your saved code snippets
Browse Snippets - look at snippets by author email address or language
Search Snippets - search code snippet text or title and description field
Add to CodeKeep - popup a form to add new code snippet. You can make the snippet private for your own use or share with the public.

Visual Studio has a built-in code snippet manager, but the disadvantage of using that is it being restricted to the machine you are working on. What if you want to pull one of those snippets out from a remote location? This is where Codekeep comes in handy. A good idea and a helpful tool for developers.

Codekeep.net also offers a way to share code snippets with a badge on your website/blog, plus it doubles as promotion for them which currently boasts a little over 8,300 registered users as of this writing. 6,640+ snippets have been created and 2,359 have been made public.

C# leads the list of most snippets, followed by VB.NET. Hardly any PHP snippets (24) are being shared. Perl (4) and Ruby (2) are even less represented.

Roach motel?
One thing I really do not like about Codekeep.net — and maybe I didn’t see this functionality so please correct me in the comments below if you know otherwise — but there is no export snippets function. I would like the ability to easily export any snippet I’ve created. Even better if a program would auto add to the built-in Visual Studio code snippet manager. This way when I conduct a new Visual Studio install on a machine I can pre-populate the built-in manager with my existing snippets.

Overall, a worthwhile tool to add to your developer arsenal, especially suited for developers who work at home and the office(s). Grade: B-

My adventure in checking out other video services continues with veoh and a video without sound below for how to start Visual Studio 2005 without the splash screen. This makes the startup process a bit faster.

For those who don’t want to do the 30 second video, just do the following:

STEP 1. Right click on the Visual Studio 2005 shortcut
STEP 2. Select “Properties”
STEP 3. In the “Target” area add a space after the double quote as shown below

STEP 4. Type /nosplash.

Thomas Baekdal has done a comprehensive analysis of actual content usage space in a browser, coming to the following conclusion:

Finally we can see what sizes we need to design for. E.g. if you want to design for 95% of your visitors you need design for no more than 776×424px (fixed layout) - or between 720×400px to 1408×912px (fluid layouts). You can also see the pixel “gab” when designing fluid layouts - at 95% it is a staggering 688px in width and 512px in height.

This report reminds me somewhat of my search engine vertical space test. Too often web designers don’t give the content enough room to breathe. Perhaps I’m in a small minority but I’d rather see a site go members-only and stay easy to consume the content than remain ad-supported and a mess of tangled ads with content. How many good content sites can you think of that have ruined themselves by drowning the content with ads? Some sites start out with too many ads, thus severely limiting their chances for being linked and bookmarked by others.

While on the subject, here’s a good list of 250+ webmaster related tools.

It’s good to see a few companies get the importance of motivating creative energy with office physical space. The Chief Happiness Officer explores 10 seriously cool workplaces. Predictably Google is on the list which I looked at their amenities back in February asking “What other companies have nice bennies like this?”

My ultimate work area surroundings
- an 80s style arcade covering the floor below me with a bat pole to descend into complete with pool table, foosball, air hockey, batting cage, mini-golf
- a stair machine exercise escalator to take me to different floors
- jacuzzi tub with water resistant LCD monitors to capture every angle and complete with satellite radio. Nothing like a relaxing hot tub to stimulate the mind
- A minimum of three monitors, but preferably six or more stacked monitors all controlled with one keyboard and mouse. Linux and Mac on the top monitors, Windows running on the bottom three monitors
- climate controlled room, workarea and chair
- 3D surround sound workarea
- full fridge with ice cube maker, snow cone machine, cotton candy and popcorn machine nearby
- a mini-movie theater accessible to experience and demo videos
- everything above voice activated with individually programmable human voices. For example if I wanted to jam to Crazy Train while working, I could have Ozzy say: “All aboard!”

What would your ultimate work area be like?

I wondered how long it would be before Google took on Koders and Krugle in a specialized search engine for coders that searches through code. Wonder no more, Google Code search has arrived.

Can’t speak for other developers but when it comes to searching for code I tend to use the resources at the programming language website or in the case of Visual Studio, the built-in search. For example, if I want to search for information on the function preg_replace in PHP I’d use php.net/preg_replace to consult the manual with examples. These source code search sites do allow convenient viewing of additional code samples.

For developer readers, do you use these code search engines or search through the manual and sample code?

Hat tip to Inside Google via Valleywag.

Update 10/12/2006 5:19pm PST: The official Google Blog lists the many different developer-oriented projects from Google.

While they point out in the 15+ minute Channel 9 video that he isn’t replacing Scoble, Rory Blyth will be starting in mid-October to fill the video shoes that Scoble exited to work for podtech.net. The last time I wrote about Blyth here in February 2005 was when he appeared on an episode of Caesar’s 24/7 trying to pick up chicks with his buddy Carl Franklin and some of the rest of the Dot Net Rocks crew. They all struck out of course. It was like an outtake segment in a bad sequel of Revenge of the Nerds. Of course in the Nerds episode they did get the girl.

I’m surprised Rory lasted 2 1/2 years as a presenter. Not because he was a bad presenter or didn’t know the material (.NET) but because he was just too out there. Strange dude, really. I saw him present twice and one of those times he awarded me — thank you — with the top prize: Visual Studio 2003 .NET Professional. He had trouble reading my name and the name of the city (proper pronounciation “pew-wall-up”). I also rowed with Rory back in 2004 here over his personal blog and mocking one of his readers who unsubscribed. I’d probably like to have that commentary exchange back (hindsight always 20/20), but still it’s there and I just winced a little re-reading it a couple years later. With this in mind, readers of this post should count me more than a bit biased on the whole Rory Blyth career critic circuit. I’m clearly not a member of the Rory Blyth fan club.

Despite this admission and disclaimer, I think Rory will do a good job in his new position. Creating compelling, entertaining video content requires people with some different thinking. Scoble had the goofy laugh and video shakes (and speaking of Scoble, he’s now busting out with a much more polished Scobleshow). Wonder what will be Rory’s signature moves?

Rory could be giving us a hint on the interview: “I have an unusually large knowledge of fine fragrances for men and women.”

Fashion and .NET Channel 9 hybrid? Rory says the imported jeans gig is just a hobby. Channel 9 Guy could probably use a little more fashion help.

We at Hmm wish Rory and Channel 9 the best of luck.

Nick Wilson rants a bit on most widgets not being useful.

As of yet, all i see are gimmicks and whirly flashy things, where’s the use? … Im not saying widgets can’t be useful, just that the majority of them are useless fluff, and there’s no clear path to $$$’s in the production of widgets.

Currently, I use zero widgets on my production machine, two widgets on my Tablet PC (Yahoo! Widgets), and four Dashboard Widgets on my Mac. There are widgets available for Wordpress and Typepad but I haven’t spent much time checking to see what’s useful there.

I have roughly a half dozen widgets on my Google personalized homepage. As I look over the ones on the tablet, I really like the MLB widget which keeps me in tune with the scores without having to visit the busy mlb.com homepage or another third party site. Also, I use the weather widget for the five day forecast. Useful for knowing what the weather will be like for the coming days so we can plan weekend activities (even though sometimes the forecasts are off).

On the Mac, I use SysStat to keep an eye on any processes that might be hogging CPU. I also have an FTP widget where I can drag items to it and have them automatically FTP’d to a directory on one of our servers. Lastly, I have a UNIX time clock ticking the seconds off since Jan 1, 1970. In Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X due out in spring 2007, they will make it even easier for non-programmers to create widgets with something called Dashcode. Expect to see many more Dashboard Widgets by this time next year, fellow Macheads.

On my Google personalized homepage, I’m trying out the new Interesting Items for You module which tries to point me to searches, pages and gadgets it thinks I might like or be interested in. Of course I have my own created TD Keno game, you don’t, too? Shame on ya ;). Also some other widgets I could live without like a good looking analog clock, movie times (almost always visit Fandango when looking for movie times) and some other mostly useless widgets.

Nick’s point questioning the money in widget production is also well reasoned and there are a few exceptions out there too. Companies like Monkey Labs who make some of the best looking widgets on the Mac have built-in nag reminders for some of their widgets asking for donations. I like Nick’s thinking with the profit sharing APIs which, after all, if you are making a widget for a third party site or using one to promote your site, maybe you should cut those who actually use them in on some of the dollars. The same is true for any site where you are building content for them to wrap ads around like most of the tagging and list sites.

I think the big thing for widgets from a site owner perspective is they are an additional marketing tool. There is value to the website owner if the widget doesn’t use too many system resources without giving something back. They are pretty good for games and shortcut programs but they also keep people from actually visiting the website. That’s not the end of the world, as a site can still make money without people visiting the site directly (embedded ads in widgets). Short messages and news headlines can be piped in but the small space really restricts anything significant from happening inside a widget. From a developer standpoint, it’s challenging thinking about how to make widgets that would be useful to both users and the website. I’ve thought about a couple different possible widgets for this site but haven’t worked on anything yet much beyond a rough idea stage.

What widgets/gadgets/modules are you using regularly that you consider useful (and why)? What type of widget/gadgets/modules would you like to see developed? If you have an idea for a widget for this website, feel free to share that too and who knows, maybe it will get developed. You’re welcome to link to widgets below, even your own created ones fellow developers, as long as they are truly useful.

Tonight a six year tradition has been interupted, maybe forever, while a new season of the NFL kicks off. In August 2000 I approached an adult webmaster community with the idea of a weekly sportspicking game that was called somewhat unceremoniously “sportspicks.” Every year since 2000 it offered adult webmasters the chance to compete against each other picking the weekly NFL games. It was enjoyed by many webmasters who played and some impressive prizes were awarded over the six years it ran. It was something I never thought of as work each year but instead a lot of fun. We even had a sportspicks blog (now defunct too) for the last few seasons.

In July of this year my month to month contract with that adult webmaster organization ended and Sportpicks was sort of left, well, homeless. Around the same time we went on vacation and then my wife had neck surgery. Meanwhile I’d been thinking about what to do about Sportspicks. Would we do a new version under one of our own sites and offer it to mainstream sites as well as adult webmasters? That was the initial plan and felt like the right way to move, so I registered an appropriate domain name for the project. I even started scratching out some code and mentioned my plans in the forums when other adult webmasters inquired about the game (some of which read this blog). I promised them that I’d write something here updating what I planned to do about this season’s contest this week.

Well, tonight the hour is growing way past late as they are playing football as I write this post.

In order to recode the program in a couple weeks it was going to be a challenge with my time limitations and the end of summer upon us, but that wasn’t the reason tonight the tradition has ended. Somewhere along the way the last couple weeks I lost interest in the project. Maybe it’s the fact that we don’t have the NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV like we’ve had in year’s past or that I didn’t want to just throw together a new version that wasn’t a dilligent effort. Or maybe it was I keep reading about anti-gambling sportsbetting stories like the one below.

Sportingbet PLC, an online gambling company, said Thursday its chairman has been detained in the United States, two months after the chief executive of BetOnSports PLC was arrested in the U.S. on racketeering charges.

The company said a hearing has been scheduled for Sportingbet Chairman Peter Dicks, though no further details were given. Sportingbet declined to specify where in the U.S. Dicks was being held.

There was never any sort of gambling associated with the version of sportspicks I administered for six seasons, but in order to monetize a site like this on our own, there are limited advertising choices available. The best of which are sites like the one above which would be in violation of Washington state law. I’m sort of flummoxed these days on anything even potentially gambling-related — or that gives the impression of being gambling-related. It’s an area our company is currently trying to move at least a little bit away from rather than trying to invest in anew. This doesn’t mean we’re shutting down mostly personal sites like tdcasino.com (my wife and my blog about visiting terrestrial casinos).

Whatever the ultimate reason if you throw all this in a blender it still means I’ve killed the project at least for this season. Maybe not forever as the domain is registered and live (nothing there, so no point in linking). Maybe during this football season I’ll quietly work on it so next year I can pick up the tradition again. I like the idea of opening this up beyond adult webmasters and to others.

Next year, perhaps, the tradition can continue. Have you ever felt kind of empty after doing something for years and then stopping? I don’t want to use the word “quitting” as I really haven’t had the time to consciously quit anything and that’s not really what’s on my mind long term anyway, especially with the history. More like temporary hiatus. At least one season, but possibly more.

Maybe I’m being completely dense here but why doesn’t the hobbyist game framework for building Xbox 360 games XLA Game Studio Framework that I’ve been excited about and looking forward to work with Visual Studio 2005 Professional? Why is it only with the Visual Studio C# Express edition? I looked around the official XLA Framework Team blog and there doesn’t appear to be an explanation (?). There is a very thorough explanation of the psychology behind the framework and other interesting details about the framework. I’m subscribed to this team blog and like what I’ve seen so far here.

On the XLA Game Studio download page system requirements clearly shows that it requires Visual Studio Express, but doesn’t indicate if the future non-beta release will support VS Studio Pro:

This release requires Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition to be installed before proceeding. You can install Visual C# Express from the Visual C# Express Download Page. However, other members of the Visual Studio 2005 line of products, for example Visual Studio 2005 Professional, can co-exist with XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) on the same computer.

I understand this framework is intended primarily for hobbyists to make games and most hobbyists aren’t going to use Visual Studio Pro which costs like $1,000 but shouldn’t everything work with the pro edition out of the gate? Or is there some really good reason that the beta only works with the VS C# Express edition?

Yeah, I know, it’s just a beta and for evaluation purposes only and if you don’t like the terms, don’t bother, I get all that. It sounds like VS Pro and Express can co-exist just fine but I’m a little leery based on past experience with some botched Visual Studio installs and system conflicts wanting to play too much with something that’s working good.

I’ve been wanting to check out and share this program for our middle teen who is interested in game development. It’s not a big deal to put on another machine with VS Express since we have several but I remain curious if the final non-beta version will support VS Pro? I’m sure this has been addressed somewhere by someone, but I didn’t see it with a quick search.

If anybody knows the answer to this one, has a link which specifically addresses this, etc, please let me know in the comments below. I’ll update this when/if I find out the answer. Thank you.

hackday.org has the signup details for this Hack Day at Yahoo which include a weekend festival of tents, tunes and TechCrunch Michael Arrington presiding. via Techcrunch:

On Friday, September 29, 2006, Yahoo will open up its Sunnyvale headquarters to all developers for a 24 hour Hack Day, followed by a really cool party on Saturday night. If you are a developer, and have an idea for a cool one-day hack project, this will definitely be a fun event for you.

Will be looking forward to see what cool things come out of:

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Gotta love the final taunting line: “Mashup or shutup!”